Just after he signed the USA Freedom Act in early June, President Obama took steps to ensure that the government’s contentious practice of collecting Americans’ phone records in bulk, one of the main sticking points in the tussle over the bill, could continue through the end of 2015.

Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer and the other “Left, Right & Center” panelists discuss Greece’s pursuit of another bailout from the EU, two major security breaches of U.S. government databases and whether Donald Trump could win America’s Latino vote.

In an excerpt from his new book, Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer points to Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision in SCOTUS’ 2014 cell phone wiretapping case, which affirmed that the ideas embodied in the Fourth Amendment represent the basic idea that sparked the American Revolution.

The FBI wants tech companies to build “back doors” into encryption that protects user information but allows government to access the data. But even if that was OK with you, it wouldn’t work, says one expert.

In an email message to subscribers, Google supported a proposed update of California telecommunications law, a change that would restrict authorities’ ability to look at people’s email and other electronic information without a warrant.

Update: Transcript added. Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer and columnist Chris Hedges argue over the significance of the USA Freedom Act—specifically, whether it represents a meaningful challenge to the national security and surveillance state.

The expiration of certain parts of the Patriot Act and passage of the USA Freedom Act ended authority for several forms of surveillance of U.S. citizens. But the government still has ways of listening to your phone calls.

The recent debates over the USA Patriot and Freedom acts missed the point: Rather than discuss the details of how much to curb the government’s right to spy on us, Americans need to question the legitimacy of all government spying and push back as hard as possible against dubious claims to protect us.

In the final installment of the seven-part interview on The Real News Network, after columnist Chris Hedges tells the Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer that he thinks the American public has been “far more complicit [in the culture of violence] than you give allowance for,” Scheer gives an impassioned response about his own experience with manipulation of the working class by elites.

In perhaps the liveliest portion of the seven-part interview on The Real News Network, Robert Scheer and Chris Hedges discuss the culture of violence in the United States as their opposing views on American history come to light.

In the fifth installment of Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges’ interview with Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer about Scheer’s new book, Hedges challenges him on his reverence for the wealthy, male elites who created the United States.

It’s not just Republican Sen. Rand Paul who doesn’t want Congress to allow the Patriot Act’s Section 215—which has enabled the U.S. government to spy on residents on an unprecedented scale in recent years—to be renewed before its scheduled expiration on June 1.

In this installment of their seven-part interview series posted on The Real News Network, Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer and columnist Chris Hedges drill into the motivations for the collusion between big tech companies and the U.S. government. The end result: Control of Americans’ data leads to control of citizens themselves.

Chris Hedges and Robert Scheer continue their conversation for The Real News Network about Scheer’s latest book, “They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy.” In this segment, they discuss whether there is room for optimism vis-à-vis the surveillance of American citizens and the plunder of personal data by the fused corporate-political state.

As Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer points out to Chris Hedges in this interview for The Real News Network, the safeguards written into the U.S. Constitution to protect Americans against abuses of their civil liberties don’t exactly apply to violations by the private sector.

In an appearance on “The Campaign With Ernie Powell,” a radio show concerned with learning how progressives can win political campaigns, Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer says the NSA is engaged in the same invasive behavior “that sparked the American Revolution.”

The House of Representatives on Wednesday gave Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a big reason to crank up his hustle if he wants to hang on to the part of the Patriot Act that allows for the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records.

In the first part of a wide-ranging, seven-part discussion about Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer’s new book, “They Know Everything About You,” Scheer says the U.S. government and private industry have merged to turn the Internet into a massive machine for simultaneously selling to and spying on Americans.

All totalitarian systems, including our own, rely on informants to keep the people afraid and under control. We will not be free of corporate tyranny until the network of snitches—in the government and on the streets—is banished.

According to a report in The Intercept, the Snowden documents describe extensive use of keyword searching as well as computer programs designed to analyze and extract the content of voice conversations and to flag conversations of interest.

The U.S. Committee on Oversight and Government Reform considered Wednesday whether Congress should pass laws requiring companies to add “back doors” to their tech products. In other words, the FBI wants a way to get into consumer data that theoretically only law enforcement—and not hackers—can exploit.

In a discussion with C-SPAN about the spying and civil liberty matters at the heart of his new book, Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer says that “the word is not ‘privacy,’ it’s really ‘sovereignty.’ ”

It was actually the corporate world that built a “massive Internet eavesdropping system,” a new book notes, and the NSA just tapped into it. “It’s less Big Brother, and more hundreds of tattletale little brothers.”

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act failed after Edward Snowden’s revelations of mass government spying. But today it’s back, largely unchanged, and President Obama is expected to reverse his opposition to it.

The Truthdig editor-in-chief’s new book, “They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy,” continues the important work on the abuse of power he began five decades ago, writes Peter Richardson at The National Memo.

The Peninsula Peace and Justice Center hosted Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer and scholar Aleecia McDonald in a public conversation about the themes at the center of Scheer’s new book, “They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy.”

The Truthdig editor-in-chief spoke about his new book, “They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy,” at a town hall event in Seattle.